Summer into winter in 7 days - Trans Siberian

This week I was triggered by another blog: subject... train travel.
One of my favourite trips so far, was the journey from the Netherlands to Bangkok by public transport, mainly trains.

I'm a long time fan of train travel, and when we started to plan this particular trip our starting point was one of the most epic trains ever: The Trans Siberian.
We ended up not doing the Trans Siberian, but the Trans Mogolian, but I'm sure at some point we will do the actual Trans Siberian.

A ticket for every hop

Now, as with every blog, I start by flipping through photos to get me into blogging 'mood'. What triggers a fun memory, or which photo do I want to show? But there is so much I can or want to tell about the TransSib! So I decided to split it up into different posts. This will be my first of a series! Consider it an intro...

In 2009 we travelled through Russia  for 4 weeks, starting late August. This made us just in time for celebrating the end of summer in St. Petersburg and Moscow day* in shorts, and the start of winter in Siberia.

Our Trans Siberian itenerary was:
6/9 Local train (elektrichka) from Moscow to Vladimir, 200 km, 3.5 hours 
8/9 Train 092 from Vladimir to Krasnoyarsk, in kupe class, 3900 km, 60 hours
11/9 Train 270 from Krasnoyarsk to Irkutsk, in platzcart class, 1100 km, 18.5 hours
19/9 Train 070 from Irkutsk to Ulan Ude, in platzcart class, 450 km, 8 hours
21/9 Train 362 from Ulan Ude to Ulan Bator, in kupe class, 650 km, 23 hours
6/10 Train K24 from Ulan Bator to Datong, soft sleeper class, 1300 km, 25 hours
11/10 Train K616 from Datong to Beijing, hard sleeper class, 400 km, 6.5 hours

Interior of an elektrichka class train

Before really embarking on our TransSib, we wanted to go to on of the Golden Ring towns encircling Moscow. We decided on Suzdal: a bus ride away from Vladimir on the TransSib route. Since it's such an short ride, you can take a local train.
You don't have te reserve a seat in an elektrichka as you have to do at an express train. Just show up at the correct train station (Moscow has a mere 15 train stations) and buy a ticket at the counter, in Russian of course.

The trip to Vladimir took 3.5 hours, on wooden benches... and I was tired enough to sleep through most of it! We spent 2 nights in Suzdal, a tiny little Golden Ring town, with more churches than people. And of course no one spoke anything but Russian there!

Vladimir train station

From Vladimir our TransSib adventure really began. Our first leg was a long one: 60 hours! In this long strech we crossed from Europe into Asia. During the Europian part we passed villages and forrest, mostly deciduous trees, turning into autumn foliage. Over the days the view changed into pine trees and taiga, villages getting scarcer.
The intriguing part is that you can see autumn arrive as in fast forward because the climate changes from a moderate continental to a taiga (subarctic) climate.

The Europe-Asia border marker

We delibiratly chose to do one long haul in our journey, as to really get the feeling of TransSib train travel. And we weren't dissapointed, in just this part of our journey we crossed 6 timezones!

To see a little bit of Russia as well, we took a small (6hour) break from the train in Krasnoyarsk.
We left our luggage at the station and went around town for a walk. It was sunny but there was a definite chill in the air. We completely missed the temperature drop due to the warm enclosure of our train!

Mosaic mural at Krasnoyarsk station featuring Lenin

Our next leg was an 18-hour stretch to Irkutzk, one of the biggest cities in Siberia. We spent most of our time there on Olkhon island. The day before we left, was pretty weird weather wise:

In the morning we walked to one of the monastries, just across the river. The weather was nice and sunny, just walking short sleeved, maybe 20'C.
On our walk back, the wind suddely picked up and we were hit by a sand storm, hiding in a bus stop shelter. The temperature must've dropped 10 degrees in half an hour.
That evening we had dinner in a restaurant, when we left: there was snow!!

Snow in september in Siberia

From Irkutsk we made a short hop (8 hours) to Ulan Ude, a very little visited city in Buryata. And with reason, altough we did manage to see the largest Lenin head in the world.
Next stop was Ulan Bataar, capitla of Mongolia! This takes about 24 hours, mostly because of the extensive border controlls. The tipical thing: you cannot buy food anywhere on this stretch, so be warned... we had just a few dry biscuits in 24 hours!

Sunrise over Ulan Bataar station

The weather in Mongolia was cold during the most of the days, freezing at night. But in the sunshine it was lovely,being in a desert meant no rain or snow, of course!
When we crossed into China, it was obvious we were travelling south, since the temperature increased while we were well into October.
We decided to no travele directly to Beijing, but to make a stop in Datong first.  This ment we arrived in Beijing on October 11.

Tickers for the last few hours on to Beijing

*) Moscow day is the day that commemorates the founding of the city. It was more like a week of celebrating, including a close down of the Red Square for military parades and Tversakya (the BIG 10 lane boulevard leading to the Red Square) closed to alle vehicles and filled with DJs, dance shows and balloons. Amazing!